


The Veiled Prisoner

by orphan_account



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:25:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all fun and games until the IAB decide Sherlock Holmes helped Captain Thomas Gregson kill the victim of the dream team's latest case. Joan tries to figure out where it all went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Veiled Prisoner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Winoniel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winoniel/gifts).



"I'm really not sure where I'm expected to start."

Joan is clearly annoyed. It's clear in the way she crosses her arms just a little bit tighter, in the way she recrosses her legs -- the left one kicking away at nothing but open air. It's in the tightness in the line of her lips, in her refusal to make eye contact until the very last word of her very last sentence is finally out in the open, and even then, eye contact is a challenge to whomever she's speaking to just try and deny the veracity, the utter _truth_ , of what she's telling them. Joan knows all this because maybe two -- three? has it been that long now that's she's forgotten the dates for the taproot moments between them? -- months into her partnership with Holmes, he started videotaping her and deliberately began systematically provoking every possible involuntary response to emotional stimuli he could think up. It was a long few weeks. Joan almost left when he cheerfully informed her it had all been so she could learn to control the way her body wanted her to respond to information and showed her the involuntarily captured videos.

So, yes. Joan knows she's annoyed, knows that the police interrogating her know she's annoyed, and she could honestly care less.

"Well, Dr. Watson, why don't we start with --" and the short, curly-haired detective in the cheaply fabricated (but, oddly, well-tailored) tweed suit starts flipping through a small notebook he carried in through the door. It's a ruse, Joan can tell. He's not reading the pages as he flips through them, not even the ones he pauses on. It's a game, same as his posture is forcibly casual: seated on the corner of the desk in the conference room the relief captain had let them use, legs spread apart, pants ruching up to show snowflake-patterned socks, hands on either side leaning in towards her listening intently. He's careful not to put a desk between them, but smart enough not to sit on the same eye-level as her. Joan narrows her eyes. The detective's eyes widen and he lifts a finger, before plopping it audibly halfway down a page. "Ah! Here we are -- the visit you and Mr. Holmes received on Christmas Eve, around 2 am I believe?"

He looks up again, and a small, placating smile that tries to scream -- hey! totally harmless, just due procedure here -- but doesn't quite reach his eyes now decorates his face. "Why don't we start there?"

"What was your name again?" Joan asks.

"Detective Boyd, Dr. Watson. Internal Affairs Bureau."

 

*

 

Joan wakes up and sits bolt upright in bed. There was a noise, she's sure of it. The too-quiet of snowfall outside makes for an awful white-noise soundtrack, but even so, it had been loud. Like a tree branch cracking against the window pane, or a car backfiring, or --

Sherlock abruptly walks into her room, about to throw on the lights, when he realizes that she's alright sitting up in bed. He pauses for less than a second, and then says, "Well, good. You're awake. We've had a visitor, and now, as visitors like to do, we have a rather pressing case. Get dressed."

Joan rubs her eyes and sighs. "There was a noise."

"Likely the door slamming downstairs, yes?" And yes, that would make sense as the source of the sound, but why -- and Joan looks at the clock now, which glaringly informs her that it is precisely 2:14 am on December 24th -- anyone would be _slamming_ the door at this hour of the day she finds herself unable to comprehend. She stops rubbing her eyes and glares at Sherlock instead, briefly debates the merits of asking for an explanation, dismisses the idea, and asks instead:

"Is there coffee on?"

"We'll grab some on the way." Which Joan knows is a total lie. "Get dressed, Watson. It's a good one."

 

*

 

"So you weren't even initially aware of the phone call?"

"No," Joan sighs.

"And you accepted his explanation of events that led to you arriving at the crime scene that morning?" Detective Boyd seems unable, or unwilling, to keep a slight note of amused incredulity out of his voice.

"Why shouldn't I have, Detective? The circumstances of the initiation of the case were annoyingly inconvenient at best," Joan explains. It's always difficult making people understand what it's like to live with Sherlock. "But hardly unusual."

"He usually interrupts your sleep at all hours of the morning with dubious explanations for excursions into the cold winter snow and you just. Well. _Roll_ with it?" The slight note of incredulity is, Joan is amused to note, no longer quite so slight.

"Yeah, kind of."

Joan raises her eyebrows at the detective, who smiles and looks to his left at nowhere in particular for a moment before prompting her to, "Go on."

 

*

 

"You seem out of breath." Now that Joan actually had a minute, and the two of them were inside a taxi cab -- taxi TV blissfully muted -- with the sound of Christmas Eve in northern Brooklyn effectively muted, she can hear Sherlock do his best not to pant. Odd.

"Nonsense, Watson. Simply a combination of the cold air and the invigorating promise of a case to be worked." Sherlock turns to peer a little too enthusiastically out the window of their cab.

Joan decides to do nothing other than take note of the evasion. Perhaps their visitor had gotten into an argument with Sherlock, leading to the door slamming, and her waking. Sherlock is usually an opulent over-sharer, his silence on the subject of where they'd gotten the case from was beginning to really bother her.

"Where are we going?" She tries instead.

"A club for interested parties in Chelsea," he answers, and Joan knows from the way he phrases it it's either a haven for alternate lifestyle participants or some sort of sex club. With her luck, both. Before her mind wanders too far into a universe where elves in shoes with bell-topped tips are beating leather-daddy Santas with candy cane paddles -- a truly strange turn of thought she decides to blame entirely on the Lady Gaga Christmas Special playing on the radio -- their driver is pulling to the curb and Joan assumes they've arrived at the crime scene.

The two of them climb out of the taxi cab and navigate the slushy sidewalk gutter, Joan falling in behind Sherlock who deftly navigates them towards an unmarked door -- just outside of which a uniformed officer is standing, ignoring the world, with fingers flying over his smartphone. As they get within ten feet of the officer -- and without looking up, mind you -- he grabs the door, and pulls it open, holding it open with his foot.

"Good evening, Officer Ozechowski," Sherlock greets in a positively jubilant tone of voice.

"Mr. Holmes," the PO returns, still tip-tapping away at his iPhone.

The door leads to a scuffed concrete corridor, and on the other side of clear plastic freezer strip curtains, an all-black staircase, surrounded by black-painted walls, spirals downwards. Sherlock looks back with a pointed look, and starts walking downwards. It's the kind of place where Joan would've expected to hear music the second they entered the corridor. It certain looks -- and smells -- the part of dingy night club. Their steps echo in the negative space of the unnerving silence. And it's here, at the final landing, past the clear window of the ticket both, that Joan finds the rest of the police offers. They buzz Sherlock and herself in through a giant concrete fire door, and yep. Yep. Joan was _definitely_ right about what Sherlock intoning earlier. It's a kinky sex club. With one utterly _awful_ 80s-esque "Conan the Barbarian" style wall mural. Depicting what appears to be a female cyborg being penetrated by a laser-toting cheetah?

Joan scrunches her eyes closed and attempts to ward off a slowly building migraine. She wants to back to bed.

"This way, Watson!"

And Joan opens her eyes to just catch Sherlock popping around the corner of what is clearly a replica of a medieval wooden stockade.

She turns the corner, and Sherlock is all the way at the end of the hallway, feet dancing anxiously, and Joan is briefly reminded of a small dog pulling at it's leash. He waves her forward, and when she finally joins him after tip-toeing through various instruments of -- well, torture may not be the most appropriate word, but focus Joan -- through various _historically accurate devices_ , he makes a sweeping gesture at a blank wall, and says "ta-da!"

Joan blinks. She's pretty sure she shouldn't be looking at blank wall, especially not when Sherlock is staring at her expectantly. So she points at the wall and says, "is it supposed to be a blank wall?"

Sherlock jumps and turns, running his hand along where a set of mirrors begin to their right, and mutters, "oh hell, does the button not work?" He's scrabbling behind a wood frame shaped like a giant X, biting his lip in concentration, when she here's a rather loud "clack!" and the wall pops free along what Joan had thought was the edge of a mirror. It takes the both of them to push the wall open enough to walk through, and on the other side, finally, a dead body.

Joan's not quite sure why that's a relief.

Marcus is there with plenty of CSIs who are thoroughly in the midst of documenting the scene. It's almost as distracting as what the room was designed to house. The walls are button-punched red velvet tiles, including the ceiling. There are a few pieces of sprawling black leather furniture, with the centerpiece a mahogany wood frame shaped almost like a traditional Japanese torii. Hanging from the center is a metal ring in a three segment trefoil shape with jewel red, fibrous ropes running through all three segments. From the leftmost piece of rigging extending from the ring is a woman -- 40s, probably, distinguished sharp features with too-few wrinkles and odd-looking lips, plastic work maybe? with beautiful, back-length auburn hair -- hanging from the neck, dead. The right most rigging, while still running through the trefoil, is on the floor in a disheveled, untied pile.

"I was wondering if someone was going to ask you to come," Marcus greets, walking towards them.

"Where's the second person?" Joan feels compelled to ask, eyes still on the second pile.

"On their way to Bellevue as we speak, seems they may have broken their back," Marcus informs them grimly, sighing. "The story goes that another patron on the other side of the door --" he gestures at the secret panel "-- heard screaming --"

"Through the music and the noises of the, ah, activities of the evening?" Sherlock queries, interrupting Detective Bell.

"They were apparently in a position that afforded them the kind of focus on the wall necessary to hear the noise," and at one point, Marcus used to get very annoyed when Sherlock interrupted him mid-explanation, but the look on his face is expectant now. Patient, even.

"Was she just under 6 foot, wearing a particularly garish shade of fuchsia lipstick?" Sherlock parries back.

"As a matter of fact, _he_ was, yes."

Sherlock makes a face that Joan roughly figures to an "oh-well" at his error, and my mistakes Joan's interest in his reaction as curiosity over his deduction and explains:

"There was a smudge of the offending fuchsia mackiage on the wall --"

"-- at about knee height for someone of your stature, I saw it too Sherlock."

Sherlock looks vaguely amused. "Very good, Watson."

Joan rolls her eyes and turns back to Marcus. "You were saying?"

"This part of the club isn't usually open on nights when it's general admission, and the patron who heard the sounds of what he said were clear cries for help, had his friend he was with go and grab the owner from behind the bar at the entrance to open the door. When the owner opened the door he found Mrs. Siobhan Fallon still rigged up the way you see her now, and Mr. Andrew Fallon on the floor, unable to stand up and help his wife, tied up as well."

Marcus tracks Sherlock with his eyes as he wanders over to the pile of red rope untied on the floor -- touching it, smelling it. "Mr. Fallon states what happened was an accident. He was doing what he described as a predicament rope bondage scene with his wife, using his body as a counterweight. Her head was attached to -- well. Point is, the rope that was running behind her head that was made into a pulley was holding up the majority of Mr. Fallon's body weight, suspending him off the floor about a foot. It slipped down, and, according to Mr. Fallon, instead of maintaining a loop, it cinched down into a noose. The slipping of the rope's position was enough to drop Mr. Fallon onto his head, at which point he lost feeling in his extremities and found himself immobile from the waist down. He watched his wife asphyxiate and was unable to sit up and untie the rope to relieve the pressure on her neck."

Sherlock stands up and, after looking around the room for a minute, asks "Was there a third person?"

"No records of it, and no one that Mr. Fallon cared to mention, no."

"Hmmm," Sherlock puzzles. "And no other exits I trust?"

"Nope."

"What about video footage?" Joan asks. "Security cameras?"

"Not in the Red Room, according to the owner. Not unless he knew a client was going to be using the room, and there wasn't anyone scheduled to use the room lats night."

"So how did Mr. Fallon know how to gain access to the one unsupervised room in the whole establishment without making an appointment?" Sherlock asks, though from tone of voice, Joan knows the question is rhetorical for the moment.

"I think the better question is whether or not this was actually a crime, or if, as per Mr. Fallon's version of events, this was actually a horrible accident." Joan isn't even sure why Sherlock was tipped on to this case in the first place. Which is when she notices, and asks Marcus:

"Where's Captain Gregson?"

 

*

 

"That was the first time you noticed the Captain's absence?"

Joan watches Det. Boyd's eyebrows pull together. She guesses he doesn't believe her.

"Yes."

"Mr. Holmes didn't mention in any way not to expect the Captain on scene?"

"The Captain is almost always our liaison on scene, and, more often than not, also our tip that a case might benefit from our consultation. I knew going into it that our tip was coming from a less than usual source --"

"Because of the strange meeting."

"Yes."

"When did you find out the identity of the source?"

"... not till much later. I'm not sure how much I can speak on the subject." Joan shifts uncomfortably. She's not sure how much respect Boyd is going to afford her  
for confidentiality in here, and she'd really want to speak to Sherlock first before knowing whether or not disclosing a secret of that magnitude was considered copacetic.

"And why is that, Dr. Watson?" Boyd is smiling broadly.

"Confidentiality."

"I assure you, I'm quite good at keeping confidence Dr. Watson."

Joan glares at the unfamiliar man. "You're perfectly aware that's not what I meant."

"Details pertaining to the whereabouts of key suspects in the case involving Mrs. Fallon are absolutely to be disclosed to me, Dr. Watson. I need to know about _everything._ "

Joan knows that. She understands the gravity of the situation. She knows Tommy Gregson isn't guilty of anything other than continued willful ignorance pertaining to the investigative methods employed by Sherlock, but she just can't bring herself to tell this stranger what she just found out herself only two days ago. It's not her secret to tell.

"I'd have to speak to Sherlock first."

Her interrogator hums. "I'm afraid there's a reason we're questioning the two of you separately." Another one of Dt. Boyd's small smiles.

"You can't possibly think Sherlock is a suspect," Joan guffaws, more than slightly flabbergasted.

"Is it such a strange assumption?" Boyd asks, conversationally. He looks up, looks at Joan for a moment, then grabs his notebook and slides off the desk. He walks over to the conference table where she's sitting and pulls out the chair directly to her right and sits in it. "What was Sherlock up to the night of the 24th before you woke up, Dr. Watson?"

"I don't know, reading probably --"

"You don't know. Do you even know if he was in your residence?"

Joan bites her lip. "No. But there are cameras --"

"-- that show us nothing, Dr. Watson. Cell phone records that are, at best, ambiguous. No other alibi."

"That he's willing to tell you."

"Oh," Boyd goes a step beyond smiling this time and actually lets out a shocked little laugh. "So you _do_ know where he was that night."

"No, I don't _know_."

"Ah, but you have an idea, don't you?"

Joan doesn't answer him, and they remain in a stalemated silence for a few minutes. She could really use some coffee. She wonders if they have Marcus in a room like this one. She fears they have Sherlock in one with one-way glass and cuff loops on the table.

"Let's try a different angle, shall we?" Boyd starts up, suddenly conversational again. "When did you first become aware that Sherlock was familiar with the club you visited that evening?"

 

*

 

"Where do you want to start looking for the owner?" Joan is once again trying to keep up a breakneck pace with Sherlock who's practically running out the club.

"We won't have to look for him, Watson," Sherlock scoffs, as the buzzer sounds, and he now begins summarily leaping up the stairs two steps at a time. "I have a way of reaching him."

 

*

 

"He told you that quickly?" Boyd sounds genuinely surprised.

"Of course he did. He said Bo Newman was an old client of his. He already had his contact information," Joan sighs.

 

*

 

"You met him during Group?" Joan can hear the skepticism in her voice but doesn't bother to keep it out. Before Alfredo started going with him, she was the one accompanying him, and regardless of whatever progress Sherlock may or may not have made, his general disdain for small talk and getting to idly know complete strangers had hardly changed.

"Yes. Well, in a sense. It would be far more accurate to say I first saw him during a meeting. I met him later." It's almost 6 am, but she's reluctantly following Sherlock into a carbon-copied, Chinese-run Mexitalian restaurant facade enticingly named Great Burrito off 23rd St, mostly fascinated with their early opening hour, less so with the awful looking pizza that looks one mold spot away from sprouting legs and making a break for it.

Sherlock, for his part, leans back and whispers conspiratorially: "Forgettable pizza, but their tacos al pastor are not to be missed!" And promptly orders four of them. Joan wonders sickeningly if he ordered one or two of those for her.

"Define met," she asks, still slightly queasy at the smell of meat cooking before she's even managed her first cup of coffee.

"I've patronized Canes before. Bo goes out of his way to be friendly to any anyone the first time they go, and as it turns out, he had a problem that needed solving, which I promptly did. Some nasty business about involuntary prostitution, not that hard to solve." Sherlock receives his tray with his soft-shell tacos, and loads each one up with even amounts of radishes, cilantro, and lime juice. He, just as Joan feared, offers one up to her, and she swallows hard, refusing as politely as she can. Sherlock seems unfazed.

"Needless to say, Bo took a bit of a shining to me. His club, however, is not the usual sort of venue I like to spend what little free time I have inside of, so --" Joan watches Sherlock take a giant bite out of the taco, almost swallowing half of it down in one gulp. "-- our relationship can be best described as purely extemporaneous and frequently nonexistent."

"OK, apart from that huge chunk of your personal life I'm going to attempt to carefully not examine --"

"-- and I am extremely thankful for your professionalism in that regard, Watson."

" -- at least not in the middle of an ongoing case, you still didn't answer my question before we left the club: why are we treating this case like a murder?"

"Ah, that," Sherlock says with thinly veiled annoyance, shoving the remaining lone taco-half into what Watson can only describe as his gaping yaw. "Mostly because it is one."

"Thanks for that incredibly elucidating explanation, Sherlock."

"Our mysterious visitor this morning kenned it were one. And then showed me something that made me believe him."

"Do I get to see this mysteriously irrefutable evidence?" Joan asks, exasperated.

"Soon," Sherlock chirps, almost in harmony with his text message tone. "Bo just informed me that Mr. Fallon had never previously used his secret room. Nor had Mrs. Fallon, for that matter."

"How did they even know the room was there, then?" Joan asks, understanding a part of the implications of the new information even as she's asking the question.

"They didn't." Sherlock's face begins to light up with an insane sort of energy.

"Someone else showed them the room," Joan agrees.

"There was a third person," Sherlock confirms, just shy of gleeful.

 

*

 

"You'd forgotten about Gregson's absence already?"

"The captain not being there wasn't unusual enough to hold my attention for long, and the issue of evidence of murder was frankly more pressing."

"That seems understandable," Boyd concedes.

"I'm pretty sure Detective Bell gave us some excuse that seemed acceptable and uniformly normal at the time."

Joan really remembers it as a non-issue. Odd, but not an issue.

"What about Bo? Did you ever contact Alfredo to validate the information Sherlock gave you?"

"Why would I have done that?" Joan fires back, exasperated. "I wasn't investigating Sherlock. I didn't see any reason to question the veracity of how he knew his connections."

"Does Sherlock even know Mr. Newman?" Boyd asks, resting his chin in the palm of his hand.

"Yes, but he was never a client.""

"He made that up?"

Joan sighs. "Yes, he did. With a full explanation of why later --"

"Which you unequivocally accepted as more than appropriate."

Joan feels her back straightening just a little bit. "Of course it was acceptable. Sherlock was trying to solve the case."

"At the expense of your trust, Dr. Watson?"

It hurts, hearing it put like that. She knows there's a part of Boyd's assertion that's true. But once Joan found out who Sherlock was protecting, _what_ Sherlock was protecting. She could at least empathize.

"What was the evidence? Who was the visitor?"

"You're asking the same wrong questions I was asking then," Joan sighs.

"Wrong how? You're saying the answers to those two things are irrelevant to the case?" Boyd is incredulous, both from twist of his lips to the way his words sound in his mowth.

"No, no. I made one serious error when we went to go see the crime scene. I assumed Detective Bell meant something when he hadn't meant that at all. If I'd only realized, I could've --" asked Sherlock what he'd been thinking. Why he would've done something so risky, so likely to ruin their lives, their passion, their employment.

"Postponed the inevitable, Dr. Watson?" Boyd asks, a certain cheekiness to his tone. And Joan has to laugh at that one, even if it's half-hearted and a little bit sad. "Well, if I am indeed asking the wrong questions, do please explain how the case progressed then, Doctor."

 

*

 

"Is Mr. Fallon out of surgery yet?" Joan asked Sherlock who was in the process of hanging up his phone with extreme prejudice.

"No," and Sherlock sounded down right petulant. "The neurosurgery consult is taking longer than expected according to Bell. It may do better to see what of his was taken off him as evidence in the meantime."

"Fair enough. Is it time to tell me about the visitor yet?"

"All good things, Watson."

Joan hailed a cab. "Back to 1PP, then?"

"If we've got to waste time," Sherlock grumbled, sliding into the cab. "I suppose that's not the worst of ways."

 

*

 

"Was there anything of note?"

"You've seen the evidence report, Detective Boyd."

"I meant, did anything stand out to _you_ , Dr. Watson?"

"I'll tell you for a cup of coffee," Joan barters. She's getting crabby and she knows it. It's the kind of unreasonable anger and annoyance that would do nothing but hinder her at this point in the discussion.

Boyd stops writing in his notebook for a minute and looks up, right at her. Weighing her. "Go. You have five minutes."

Joan doesn't need to be told twice. Once out of the conference room, she considers her options. Coffee was a definite must, so a beeline to the Keurig was first up. She isn't sure how much snooping she can really get away with, and she's also not sure of Boyd's surveillance capacity. Was it better to assume Brother and air on the side of paranoid caution? Or was it better to find out exactly how much trouble Sherlock was in -- even if she couldn't help him anyway, and was locked up along with him for her troubles? It's beyond frustrating, Joan feels it down to her bones as her coffee makes a noise as it's birthed into the world.

As she adds half-n-half and a touch of turbinado sugar, she decides: one quick look down the interrogation corridor. Just to see the slates.

"Hey." Comes the quiet, but urgent, voice of Marcus Bell at her shoulder.

"Marcus, thank God. Are they giving you the third degree too?" Joan is relieved to have someone to cling on to. Marcus looks -- distracted.

"I don't have a lot of time, and my rat detective specifically told me not to talk to you, so."

"I'm sorry," Joan says, because she's not sure what else to say. Marcus starts adding sugar to his coffee.

"It's fine. Listen -- your boy needs to talk."

Easier said. "It's important to him, Marcus --"

"It's not worth going down for. Whatever secret of Gregson's he's holding on to, it's just not worth it. I know the Captain, I know the secret isn't that he's a murderer. There is nothing else on this earth worth taking this kind of fall for. Sherlock needs to spill. And maybe, maybe if you gave them some new material --"

"Stop it. I can't. It's not my choice. It's not my secret." Joan's voice has gotten involuntarily loud.

"Listen, listen," Marcus says, looking around, placating. "Listen. I didn't say, give the info up. I said, give them something they can use to break Sherlock down. You have to try."

She knows. She just has to figure out how to do it. Marcus looks back over his shoulder again, before offering a predictable:

"I gotta get back --"

"I know. Good luck."

"Same to you." And Marcus dashes down the opposite way Joan came. It's about time she returns too, coffee in hand. Her five minutes are probably about up.

Boyd looks no more thrilled or disappointing at her return; he looks up, acknowledging and cataloging her return. "Would you like a few minutes of restful silence, or are you ready to get back to my questions, Dr. Watson?"

"I'd prefer to continue on."

"Very well. The evidence."

"There wasn't anything interesting, really. Mostly unremarkable personal effects. He had a phone on him, without a battery, SIM chip, or SD card, which was odd. He also had his wife's prescription of Versed on him -- which if you looked at the fill date, the frequency with which they were to be ingested, and the number left, didn't add up, but that's common. He also had a bag-check stub. No bag found to match. She had no belongings. My guess is that her bag was the one checked and someone picked it up."

"What about the toxicology report?"

"There wasn't one ordered because the death had been though to be accidental. I went to the ME with Sherlock and did one myself."

"And?" Boyd prompted.

"Alcohol and versed in her system. Her dosing was 7mg oral tablet once before bedtime. She had evidence of consuming almost 4 times as much prior to her death. On top of the benzos, she had alcohol on board. The only thing convincing me her asphyxia was traumatic and not medical in nature is the ligature marks on her neck from the rope that became her noose and petechiae -- little red dots -- on her face and in her sclera, which are evidence of traumatic asphyxiation as well."

"So she was drugged."

"That was the conclusion I came to, yes."

"Indeed." Boyd pauses for a minute, pen tapping on the paper of his notebook. He turns to look at Joan for a minute, blatantly speculative. " So at this point in time, were you now, moving forward, convinced this case was a murder beyond all doubt?"

Joan smiles, knowing full well she was convinced the second Sherlock told her it was one. But she gets Boyd's point. And Sherlock's need to prove, in a fastidiously logical fashion, that Mrs. Fallon died of unnatural causes. "Coupled with the mounting evidesunce of a third person present during the time of the incident, I'd become incredibly suspicious, yes."

"Enough that Mr. Holmes was convinced you'd collected enough of your own evidence that whatever evidence he was now prepared to bring forwards to you wouldn't unfairly color your opinion in any way?"

Joan meets Boyd's gaze. "It took me a long time to figure out that's what he was waiting for, but yes. I think you've sussed his motivations out correctly."

"So he told you about the meeting."

"Yes."

"Who was it with?" And Joan thinks, briefly, about Marcus's advice before answering. And then she begins to talk.

 

*

 

Joan notices Sherlock walking into the kitchen, but relegates it to her periphery because she's adding cream to the ragu she's making, and she can't let it boil. Sherlock pops over her shoulder, obviously observing with an obnoxious weight to his gaze. If Joan had to guess, she'd guess he wants to say something. Joan sighs.

"Yes?"

"Is that Bindenfleisch you fried up and added to that sauce? It has a very distinct -- aroma," Sherlock mumbles, rolling his Rs on the word "aroma." Joan knows that's not what he came over to ask.

"I think the lady at the Fairway counter called it Swiss salami, but --"

"It's very different from salami, my god. It's made of beef, first off, and the white wine used in the curing process gives off a particular sulfuric smell that is particular to Bindenfliesch -- the wine used is also usually from the same region of Switzerland, and uses a particular kind of grape, the Müller-Thurgau. It has tannins that turn a bit eggy when you heat them up. Hence, you must be using Bindenfleisch."

"How educational," Joan intones. She never fails to be utterly amazed the lengths to which Sherlock will go to avoid a topic. "Were you planning on asking me what you actually wanted to know before I finished making dinner, or could we save whatever's on your mind for meal time?"

Sherlock deflates a bit, pulls back, and starts pacing a five foot strip in the kitchen. She can sense him working himself up, until he finally stops, and manages to get out, "Have you heard any news on Mr. Fallon's progress?"

Joan frowns. She doesn't understand what about that question is making Sherlock so anxious. And paralyzed, it's not as if Mr. Fallon's going to be a flight risk. "I touched base with Detective Bell right before I started dinner, still no news."

"Damn," Sherlock sighs. And continues to pace.

"We have other avenues to explore. There's the matter of the witness that the police stated was the one to alert the owner, Bo, to the crime in progress. There's actually sitting down at speaking to Bo himself. And then, of course, there's the matter of your secret informant who supposedly has some sort of information on the case. We could discuss where that might lead us. And there's, of course, friends and associates of the deceased --"

"Stop, stop. Just, stop," Sherlock huffs, and plops into one of the chairs at the small table in their kitchen. "I texted Bo already, I'm wary of asking to speak to him in person unless he seems good for the deed himself. He's an incredibly suspicious person by nature. The supposed witness is probably a dead end. Friends and associates is going to be tricky because we'll have to file them into those who were aware of Mrs. Fallon's proclivities, and those who weren't. And unless she had something as damnably convenient as an online profile which she used specifically for kink-related purposes, that's going to be difficult to suss out and the legwork will be time-consuming."

Joan finishes her whisking and slides the saucepan over to warming plate, adding steaming rigatoni and folding them gently into the sauce. Something's not sitting right with her. And it's not just the sustained mystery of the informant, it's as if Sherlock is working with twice as much information he just simply can't tell her. "Since when has time-consuming stopped us from exploring a lead?"

Sherlock chews on his nails and doesn't make eye contact.

"No, really, is there some sort of a timeline I'm unaware of here?" She turns around to fully face Sherlock, wooden spoon in hand, dinner momentarily forgotten.

Sherlock seems frozen for a moment, before pulling himself upright, and saying almost too quickly for Joan to parse: "The informant is Gregson."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Thomas Gregson. Was the man in our flat who told me about the case this morning."

Joan is confused into silence for a moment -- why it necessary to keep that a secret? Why didn't the Captain then escort them to the crime scene afterwards?

"I imagine you must be confused," Sherlock continues after a moment, voice oddly strained. "He was here in a personal capacity, not as a Captain of the NYPD. He was here because he was positive he'd wind up being fingered as a suspect, and obviously, we both know the man is not of a character to commit pre-meditated murder. He was here to ask me for help."

Joan understands now why Gregson wasn't on scene. It wouldn't do to be accused of tampering with evidence in a case you might be implicated in, but she was failing to comprehend why Gregson was even being dragged into this in the first place. She says as much to Sherlock.

"Ah," Sherlock says and frowns. "I don't imagine I need remind you of this, but Thomas is a years-long friend of mine -- since London, even -- and his personal life should remain confidential and his own. Under any and all circumstances."

"Of course," and now Joan is frowning herself.

"Gregson is a patron of Canes. He is, as they say, in the Lifestyle. And while he rarely engages in direct sexual contact with his -- "play partners," he does engage in quite a bit of sado-masochistic activity. Almost always with other men."

It's a lot to process. It's even more to process in the context of Sherlock's knowledge of this element of his lifestyle. Suddenly she's thinking back to Gregson's separation from his wife, and as if Sherlock can sense what's on her mind, he continues: "Mrs. Gregson was aware of that element of her husband's needs when they met, though it was one of the primary causes of the tension leading to their separation. I grilled Gregson on a lot of his liaisons in this regard privately in case there was a connection to their home invasion, but that wound up bunk. As you well know."

"OK," Joan finally speaks. "OK, so he went to the club a lot. So what? Not everyone in the club is a suspect. The cameras don't work well enough to even identify all the people there, if Gregson was even there on the night the murder took place."

"Well, the what in this case, Watson, is that he was play partners with Mr. Fallon. And Mr. Fallon was rather open about his rank hatred and supposed abuse suffered at the hands of Mrs. Fallon. Mr. Fallon, even, at one point, was attempting to surreptitiously ask Captain Gregson for advice on how to murder his wife, since he knew -- though not in what capacity -- of the Captain's affiliation with the police. Gregson stopped seeing him at that point. This was last Saturday."

"Jesus," Joan hisses. =

"Indeed," Sherlock agrees, slumping into the chair even more. "And he _was_ there, Watson. He was there last night. He came here right after it occurred. There was an awful hullaballoo, and Bo let most of the patrons leave right after calling the police."

"Was he caught by any of the cameras?"

"Only entering."

"And what did he say he was doing?"

"He was playing with his pick of the evening."

"And you believe him?"

Sherlock looks up at that and makes eye-contact. "Unequivocally."

Joan lets out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. "Alright." She sweeps her hair back, becoming cognizant of the cooling dinner once again. "Alright, let's eat on it, and then figure out how we're going to help him."

 

*

 

Joan stops for a minute once she realizes Detective Boyd hasn't written anything in his notebook for the last five minutes. She sees his pen still perched on the graph paper of his notebook. Boyd seems to have stopped mid-sentence, though she doesn't quite have the eyesight to make out what he was writing down just before. Boyd himself is simply staring down at his notebook, a rather peculiar look on his face. Joan knows something's happened, some massive shift in Boyd's operating paradigm, but she can't tell if it's for the better or worse -- not yet, anyway.

"Detective?" She asks, gently. No response. Joan thinks the better of touching the man, it would breech whatever professional bubbles they've constructed around themselves.

She settles for asking once again, "Detective?" but more sharply this time.

Boyd looks up at her. He seems to be mulling something over. "I was just thinking, Dr. Watson."

"Do tell," Joan parries.

"Why do you think Captain Gregson didn't report Mr. Fallon to the authorities when he began to appear as if he was solidifying a plan for his wife's death?"

"I found that curious myself," Joan answers, uncrossing her legs. "And I asked Sherlock during dinner."

 

*

 

"Do you know what a cuckold is, Watson?"

Joan does her best not to choke on her pasta or look flustered at the question. She chews until she's no longer worried about inhaling her death, and puts down her utensils. "It was covered, a little. In some sex psychology classes. And I've had previous clients who've had tastes that run in that direction, so I've had to become familiar."

"I didn't realize you were that accommodating of your clients' tastes, Watson."

She gives Sherlock a poisonous look. "Sex addiction is still addiction, Sherlock."

Sherlock seems almost disappointed, somehow, before gathering himself and continuing. "Gregson told me Mr. Fallon engaged in a cuckolding relationship with Mrs. Fallon. Mr. Fallon had frequently attempted to engage Gregson on Mrs. Fallon's behest in setting up a scene where Gregson would sexually dominate Mrs. Fallon in a joint effort to humiliate Mr. Fallon. But as I mentioned earlier --"

"Gregson doesn't like to sleep around. Right."

"Indeed. So he frequently wound up having to rebuff Mr. Fallon's suggestions. A lot of what Mr. Fallon termed "abuse" blurred the lines of what might be expected of a male submissive in a cuckold with a female dominant, according to Gregson. It seemed more as if he was simply dissatisfied with the nature of the relationship his wife desired of him. When Mr. Fallon's grousing veered more towards actual intent to do harm, Gregson said he firmly counseled Fallon to break-up with his ball-and-chain, explaining how he felt it was simply a matter of needs burdening the relationship grievously. He refused to see Fallon again until "he'd gotten himself to a healthier place." Gregson's exact words."

"But Fallon was serious." Sherlock sighs, pushing his pasta around on his plate with his fork. "So it would seem."

"And someone helped him."

"Someone who capable of helping him in the room, but wasn't in the room at the same time."

"Well, Bo could just be lying about not seeing anyone else in the room," Joan suggests.

"I'd thought of that," Sherlock muses. "But there's no DNA evidence at all to support the presence of a third person in the room. No saliva, no hair, not one iota of snot. No traces of foreign materials such as latex or nitrile on the skin of either Fallon. No shoe prints."

It was certainly a mystery.

"You know, we're going to need to talk to Bo again," Joan tries to tell Sherlock as gently as possible. The idea of a face-to-face with the man seriously seems to agitate him.

"I know," Sherlock hisses, almost petulantly.

"Can you set something up for the first thing tomorrow morning? Maybe after he cleans the place up?" Joan asks, taking Sherlock's plate away from him, the few remaining pastas now having been poked to death by his fork and brainstorming process.

"Why not?" Sherlock sighs, sliding his phone out and typing out a message.

 

*

 

"You do realize a frightening amount of his deduction on this case hinges entirely on Gregson's assertions and his blind trust of the man?" Boyd suddenly interrupts.

Not quite, Joan thinks. But she can't bring himself to tell Boyd the whole truth (or the truth as best as she was able to deduce), no matter what. It would hurt Sherlock more than it would help. And the pieces of the puzzle are there for the IA detectives to put together and question Sherlock with, should they so choose. She can't do much else at this point. "I realize it certainly seems that way."

"You disagree, though, Doctor? I can't see how you could," Boyd cocks his head to the side. "Unless, of course, you know something I don't."

"Maybe you should ask Sherlock about his deductions. Seeing as he's the one who made them," Joan replies rather snidely.

"Oh, I plan to. Just as soon as we're through here. And I sense we're getting to the end."

Joan thrills at that. She may not be able to help Sherlock here, locked in a room, waiting for interrogation. But she could continue to work on the outside. And nothing surer than another, stronger, suspect would clear the Captain's name faster.

"What else do you want to know?" Joan prompts the detective.

"How fruitful was the visit you paid Bo?"

 

*

 

Once again, Joan finds herself in this dingy hell-hole with all the lights on -- burning away the dark shroud that lent Canes it ambiance, it's permission to be as gaudy as it actually was. They find Bo Newman standing in black leather chaps, black leather vest, and wide-brimmed leather hat behind the bar, cleaning up the shelves and doing the dishes. It's 6 am. The place looks as if it had just closed.

As she and Sherlock approach Bo -- he knows they're there, he'd buzzed them through the door after all -- she whispers to Sherlock: "How does this place manage to stay open past 4 am? Illegally?"

"Have you taken a good look at the bar offerings, Watson?"

She takes a moment to scope out the shelves. Sodas. Water. Juice. A suspicious lack of alcohol. "They're dry."

"Well, BYOB, really, but yes. Different licensing. They're not considered a bar."

"Hence our ability to stay open till dawn with the blessings of the law, pretty lady," Bo finishes, winking at her, all southern charm. "How can I help you two?"

There's noise as he shifts, and Joan notices he has on a rather large utility belt, containing a coiled single-tail, a hank of rope, cuffs, and a couple other implements Joan hopes are actually use for repair work on the club's instruments instead of on people. "We wanted to talk to you about --"

"-- Andrew Fallon. I know. Sherlock here told me last night. Forgive me for being so direct, but I have a lot from the potluck I need to clean up. What would you like to know?"

Not exactly hostile, Joan notices, but guarded. Certainly as impatient as his manners will allow him to be. "Anything you can tell us."

"Not much to tell, to be honest. He came here fairly regular. Sometimes with the wife -- she was a firecracker, let me tell you -- sometimes without. Same for her, she wasn't always with her husband when she came. Neither one of them were the private room type. She liked to put him on display, and he didn't put up much of a fight. Andrew came here a few times with other guys. A lot of different ones. One a few more times than the others -- stout-framed, blonde, wicked blue eyes. Older. Quiet, had a very confidential manner about him. Good with a knife --"

"Is this him?" Joan interrupts, not wanting or needing to know much else about what Captain Gregson may or may not be good at. She shows Bo a picture of Gregson displayed on her phone and the man nodds.

"Got him in one. He's hard to forget if you get a look at his eyes."

"How frequently would he and Mr. Fallon be in here together?"

"Oh, hell. At least once a week. Sometimes twice. Hadn't been around together in the last week, not since the weekend before last, actually. A little odd, but they may have had a falling out. Who knows. It happens a lot," Bo offers, offhandedly.

"Was there anything unusual about the scene that caused Mrs. Fallon's demise and Mr. Fallon's unfortunate injury?" Sherlock asks.

"I'm not really sure what Andrew was into, but that neck rope shouldn't have cinched down like it did. That kind of predicament suspension isn't exactly for amateurs, but even experienced riggers make mistakes sometimes. I guess maybe he was shy about showing off his work, god knows who let him into that room though."

"What about the man we showed you, had he ever previously accessed the Red Room?" Sherlock presses. He grabs Joan's phone and shows Bo Gregson's picture once more.

"Beats me. Not that I remember. If you gave me a name, I could check my books --"

"Could we perhaps instead take a look at your books to see if the name appears there? You have to understand, the man's not officially under investigation for anything yet -- we're still operating as if this unimaginable tragedy is just that: a horrific accident. I can't really break confidentiality and tell you his name."

Bo blinks at Sherlock for a minute, and Joan doesn't think he's going to bite. Finally, the man shrugs. "If it'll get the both of you out of here faster, sure. Just -- no pictures, you hear?" He shakes a finger at Sherlock. "And I'm serious about that. You'd need a warrant for that anyhow."

"You're absolutely correct. I promise, no pictures," Sherlock responds, eager and all smiles, instantly setting Joan on edge.

The owner walks into the coat check area and fishes around some drawers before procuring an old-fashioned log book, handing it to the duo across the bar. "I need to start sweeping by the cages in the back. I'll be back in five minutes. I'd say take as much time as you need, but I need you out of here in 15 minutes. The red ribbon marks this week."

Sherlock nods appreciatively and starts foraging into the book. Joan watches Bo retreat as promised into the back. Once the man dissapears around the corner, Sherlock asks, "Is he gone?"

"Yes," she says, looking back at Sherlock.

"Good," Sherlock responds, never taking his eyes off the book. "Give me your phone."

"I thought we agreed to no pictures," Joan counters, nonetheless handing over her phone as asked.

"We did," Sherlock admits. "We did nothing similar regarding videos, however."

Joan can feel herself smiling and turns back around, tossing over her shoulder a softly spoken: "I'll keep a look out."

 

*

 

"The debatable legality of your information collecting aside," Boyd says, trying to fight a smile off his face. "Did it prove productive?"

"Gregson's name wasn't on there."

"What about an alias?"

"Doubtful -- Bo requires people to furnish legal ID to book any of the rooms."

"Someone else on there could've just as easily furnished Gregson with the information on the room."

"Yes, possibly, but the people who pay for the privilege of using the rooms, not to mention the stripping of their anonymity to do so, I imagine want them to stay hidden."

Boyd taps his pen on the cover of his notebook. "That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to in order to find a very flimsy peace of evidence that barely exonerates your friend Captain."

"Well," Joan argues. "It actually served two purposes, I suspect. One was peace of mind that Gregson wasn't lying -- and that was more for me, mind you. The second was tied into a theory we were on our way to the hospital to test when you had the police bring us back here."

"Did Sherlock suspect Bo?" Boyd asks, surprised.

"I haven't had an opportunity to confirm that with him since you haven't allowed the two of us to speak with each other," Joan can hear the pure annoyance leaking back into her speech again.

Boyd sits back in his chair, looking at a spot somewhere on his left cuff. After a while, he closes his notebook and sits forward. "I'm afraid the implication of Bo Newman will have to remain your mystery to solve, Dr. Watson. Thank you for your time and cooperation."

Joan stands up with Boyd, a little shocked. "That's it?"

"That's it," Boyd says, extending his hand. "Though I wouldn't recommend any trips out of state, if at all avoidable."

Joan shakes it, for a moment at a loss of what else to do. "Are you going to proceed with charging Gregson or Sherlock with a crime?" she asks.

Boyd stops at the door, and looks back over his shoulder at Joan. "We haven't made up our mind yet. There are a few other investigators, we'll have to convene before moving forward. In the mean time, neither Mr. Holmes nor Captain Gregson will be released on their own recognizance."

"I see," Joan responds, a little numb from the interrogation.

"Are you sure there isn't anything else you'd like to tell me?" Boyd asks, for the last time.

And Joan thinks --

 

*

 

"I got a message on our way home from Detective Bell," Joan says as Sherlock fiddles with the keys to get them back inside their home.

"Oh?" Sherlock responds, pushing open the door.

"According to Marcus, the doctors are saying Mr. Fallon can have visitors now," Joan says, and Sherlock stops in the entry way.

"Seems a pity to have come all the way back to Brooklyn just to turn around, but needs must, Watson," Sherlock shrugs and starts to corral her back out the door.

Joan puts up a hand. "I really do need to use the bathroom first," she explains, exasperated.

"If you must, but please just use the downstairs commode instead of retreating into the comfort of your upstairs bathroom. People tend to take less time doing their business in less familiar surroundings, Watson."

Joan rolls her eyes. "I'll use the downstairs bathroom, Sherlock. It's fine."

She's pretty sure she stored some of her feminine products in the medicine cabinet for emergency purposes. She opens the door and turns on the light. Joan regards her own reflection for a minute, idly noting the bags under her eyes, the greasy quality of her hair. When had she actually showered last? There were times when she truly hated how all consuming working with Sherlock became. There's a small, frosted window to the left of the mirrored medicine cabinet which was propped open slightly to vent the small space. It had begun to rain outside, and Joan indulged for a moment in the sounds of the rain drops softly pattering against the glass, in the small spritz of cold water that splashed through the crack on to her hair and face. It was as close to a moment of zen as she was going to get until this case was solved.

"Watson, we need to make haste!" comes the muffled shout down the hall and through the closed door.

"Coming!" Joan calls back and sighs.

She slides open the medicine cabinet and spies her small cache of tampons in a ziplock back next to a bottle of shaving cream. She pulls them out, does her business, and it's not until she goes to put them back that she notices a small oblong container that had presumably been shoved behind her tampons sometime since she'd last been in this bathroom. She pulls it out. It's lipstick. Urban Decay, which -- isn't her brand.

Joan frowns. She looks at the name of the color -- Anarchy -- which doesn't ring any bells, so she pulls the cap off the stick and twists it open. It's a startlingly bright shade of fuschsia. It takes Joan a minute to place what about the lipstick is bothering her, and but when her memory decides to suddenly become helpful, she gasps and drops it on the floor.

_"There was a smudge of the offending fuchsia mackiage on the wall --"_

_"-- at about knee height for someone of your stature, I saw it too Sherlock."_

_Sherlock looks vaguely amused. "Very good, Watson."_

He'd had the gall to look _amused_. Joan stops herself, for a minute. Maybe she was jumping to all the wrong conclusions here, maybe Sherlock had simply pilfered the lipstick from the crime scene -- and why the _hell_ would he do that, Joan?

Sherlock knocks on the door this time. "We do really need to go. Are you alright?"

"I -- I'm fine, Sherlock," Joan manages to get out, flushing the toilet and quickly picking up the lipstick and pocketing it, not knowing what else to do. "I'm coming out right now."

She opens the door to a vaguely concerned-looking Sherlock, who's concern becomes decidedly more pronounced once he finally lays eyes on Joan.

"You're sure you're quite alright?" he asks, voice full of genuine concern.

Joan forces herself to smile. She's going to have to confront Sherlock about this at some point -- and soon. It could compromise their entire investigation. He usually wasn't this sloppy, but. She knew Sherlock cared significantly for Gregson, she'd just had no idea how much. Or perhaps, perhaps this was a casual arrangement between the two of them? But somehow that didn't ring true for either man, at least not when engaging in something intimate with someone they knew and worked with.

"I'm fine Sherlock. I just want this case solved."

Sherlock holds the front door open for her, and Joan believes him so sincerely when he replies: "That makes two of us, Watson."

 

*

 

\-- Joan thinks, "Not that I can say." And say as much out loud to Boyd.

"Very well," Boyd nods. "Unless you need anything else from me --"

"Actually, Detective, there are a few things I could use. Marcus Bell, for one. To help me continue the investigation into Bo Newman and Andrew Fallon. And I want to give some evidence to Sherlock. I realize you don't want the two of us talking, but I'd like to give him some items to look over."

"You do realize you're hardly in the position to negotiate either point, Dr. Watson," Boyd laughs.

"I do realize that. But I think we all want the actual killer caught," Joan huffs. "And besides, I do need to try and exonerate Sherlock and Gregson. I owe both men that much, and confirming that Bo Newman was Andrew Fallon's accomplice would be the best way of doing just that."

Boyd is quiet for a moment, the previous moment's mirth taking a minute to drain from his body. "OK. You and Detective Bell can continue your investigation. You'll report everything you find on a day-to-day basis to me. If I call your phone, you had better pick up, or I will come find you. Trust me when I say you don't want me to do that, doctor. I may drop in at any given moment to see how you're making progress. As for the the evidence you want to give to Holmes, I'm going to sit on that. It depends largely on how his interview goes. I need to determine he hasn't corrupted the integrity of the investigation just to throw everyone off Gregson's trail."

Joan doesn't like it, but it's a start. "Alright. Do you mind if we head over to Bellevue to talk to Fallon? That's where Sherlock and I were heading when you picked us up."

"Go for it. I hear he's in physical therapy and off the ICU. It's a different building --"

"-- I know, I'm familiar with Bellevue Hospital, detective," Joan interrupts, eager to leave.

"Of course you are. Detective Bell is in the small conference room over by the lockers," Boyd tells Joan, holding the door open for her. Joan nods curtly in thanks and makes a beeline for freedom. She hears Boyd call at her retreating figure: "Do stay in touch, Dr. Watson." Joan frowns.

 

*

 

Joan finds Marcus standing alone in the conference room, utterly focused on his phone. She knocks on the glass door, and he startles slightly, glancing up. He seems surprised to see her, but smiles and walks to the door.

"They done with you?" he asks Joan.

"More or less. You?"

"About an hour ago. Any news on Sherlock?"

Joan shakes her head. "I was actually about to ask you the same thing."

Marcus sighs. "Well, if they've still got him where he was when we had to bring him up here, he's in Interrogation B. I haven't technically been barred from seeing what progress they've been making on him, and since I'm done now, if you want, I could go look?"

Joan seriously considers it for a moment, but she knows they're already wasting time just by catching up. She shakes her head. "He'll be fine for a few more hours. I have faith. In the meantime, I got permission from the IAB to continue on the trail of the killer with you as my supervising officer. You feel up to it?"

"Absolutely. Anything to fix this," Marcus replies. Joan is relieved to hear his thoughts so clearly mimicking her own. "Let me just go grab my jacket from my desk. I assume we're heading to the hospital?"

"Got it in one."

Marcus nods, and Joan leads the way.

 

*

 

It's still raining outside. Marcus pulls the RMP into the ER lot. It's the easiest access to the White Ambulatory Care Pavilion which is where they need to go. They both sit in the cruiser for a minute staring at the weather outside.

"You know what bothers me the most about this situation?" Marcus asks, not really wanting an answer. "The idea that Sherlock would compromise his own detective work just to help Gregson escape a murder charge -- especially if he were guilty."

It was something that bothered Joan too, but if she didn't trust Sherlock as implicitly as she did, if she hadn't been present for the first-hand account of his investigation, it might be a lot easier to believe he'd cooked it to skew things away from his friend. If Sherlock even considered Gregson as really just a friend anymore. "Well, there was that one time he was willing to commit murder to avenge what he thought was his dead girlfriend."

Marcus rolls his eyes. "Two things --" and Marcus lifts up his hand, extending one finger. "One, he loved Moriarty."

Joan can feel the lipstick digging into her thigh, trapped in her pants pocket. Marcus pops a second finger, and continues to speak. "Two, murdering someone to revenge a death is different from violating the integrity of your investigation. Sherlock's reputation for accurate investigations is everything to him. Or I feel it is. Do you disagree?"

"No," Joan admits. "I don't disagree."

"So again, I call bullshit," Marcus finishes and rests his head against the fogged-up window. Joan imagines the cool glass must feel nice.

"Hey," she says after a minute's consideration. "Thanks for believing in him."

Marcus meets her eyes, head still resting against the window, and smiles. "You know where we're headed?"

"Yeah," and just like that Joan snaps herself back into reality, back into the non-existent amount of time they have left to prove Gregson and Sherlock not guilty of collusion or murder. "Follow me. It's not that far, and most of the walk we can do under awning."

She steps out of the RMP, jacket pulled up over her head. Marcus follows suit, keeping pace behind her as she scurries towards where the two of them hope Andrew Fallon will be waiting for them.

 

*

 

"Andrew Fallon," Joan says, and the only indication she gets that she has the right man is that he stops doing wrist curls with tiny 2 lb weights, something with which he was having a severely difficult time managing, and sits perfectly still.

She looks back at Marcus, who nods, encouraging her to continue. Joan walks around the bench bed where Andrew is situated to where some chairs are clustered. Taking a seat, she can finally see the face of the man that matches the photo she was furnished with by the police. He looks, for lack of a better description, like utter shit. His skin is very pasty, he has greenish, almost bruise-like, bags under his eyes. He has on a nasal cannula to supply him supplemental oxygen. Joan can track the various tubes and bags inserted and stapled and attached on to him and very quickly manages to sketch a rough idea of what parts of his body don't work for him anymore.

"Incomplete injury of... C7 through T2?" she asks, as gently as she can. He may have murdered his wife, but Joan knows these kinds of injuries are much worse than dying depending on how transient they are.

He doesn't look at her, but asks, "What, are you another doctor?"

"I was, once," Joan answers honestly.

Fallon grimaces. "C7 through T5. Complete injury of T6 and T7. They're trying to work on my hand dexterity and my breathing first, so I can maybe get put into a wheelchair soon."

"I'll try and keep this quick, then, so you can go back to working on your exercises."

"What's your name?" Fallon asks, look at her for the first time.

"Joan."

"You a social worker, Joan?"

"No, Mr. Fallon," Joan says as calmly as possible. "I'm with the police."

Fallon drops eye contact at that and turns his head away from Joan. "What do you want?"

Joan thinks about how best to approach this. Wondering about how deep the bond between him and his accomplice truly is now that his accomplice is out there, walking free, and Fallon is in here, never to walk again. She's not sure he's ready to give up the name of the person who helped him, but she may never have a better opportunity to get it out of him.

"I don't want to mince words with you, Mr. Fallon. We know the death of your wife wasn't an accident."

Fallon laughs at that, a horrible and broken little sound. "You think I wanted to make myself into a paraplegic? Because chicks really dig wheelchairs? Because my quality of life would be just _so much better_ when I'm barely able to move my wrists?"

"I don't think you wanted to injure yourself so severely, Mr. Fallon," Joan replies. "But I do think you meant to kill your wife, and you definitely wanted it to look like an accident."

Fallon's laughter takes on an incredulous edge, and he looks back at Joan. She keeps looking right back at him, and suddenly, all pretense just vanishes, and the laughter turns into sobs. Not overplayed grief. Just silent, racking sobs. They pass, eventually, and he starts crying quietly.

"We have proof," Joan insists, and Fallon finally drops her gaze again. "There are just a few things that don't add up, that don't make sense, without you having a partner."

He remains quiet, which Joan takes as implicit permission to continue. "You drugged your wife with more of her Versed than she was supposed to take. Maybe slipped it into something you brought with you to the club." Sherlock had smelled alcohol on her breath at the scene of the crime. "But you wanted to do a scene with Siobhan, one you told her made you nervous because I'm betting it wasn't something the two of you regularly did with one another. So you managed to get her into the Red Room -- the access to which you found out from your partner."

Fallon makes a soft noise that Joan's not quite sure isn't a sob. "But here's the thing that's been bothering me -- the intricate nature of a predicament suspension, you'd have to know what you were doing to even try and rig something like that. So you modify her neck rope into a noose, it snaps her neck, and you remain in a suspension unable to go help her, eventually attracting attention by screaming for help. But that's not what happened. You placed the rope too high up, and by the time you realized your mistake, your wife was already unconscious and you were suspended by her body weight. That's not a mistake someone who understands the mechanics of predicament bondage would make. I'm thinking your partner was the expert, Andrew, and you screwed up his directions."

"I was never any good at knots. Not even in the boy scouts," Fallon grates out.

"So how did you troubleshoot your problem, Andrew? You wouldn't have been able to fix the problem of your defective noose all on your own. You didn't know how."

Fallon is quiet for so long Joan doesn't think he's going to answer her. She's shifting her weight to call Marcus over, when Fallon starts to answer her. "I had a phone. I called him. He told me to push off the t-frame, to grab on to her, and to manually pull the rope down over her wind pipe. I had no idea what I was doing, it wasn't even my rope. But his suggestion, it -- it worked, but the rope shortened so much on her end, it dropped me as I was swinging back towards the edge of the t-frame and it dropped me, head first, onto the wooden foot of the frame. I dropped the phone, but he was still on the other end of the line. I couldn't feel my hands, I couldn't feel my legs, and I screamed for him to help me, I thought he was going to help me, I --"

And Fallon breaks off to start crying again. "That fucking coward, he was supposed to help me escape her, not get trapped inside of a body I can't even fucking use."

"What was his name, Andrew?" Joan asks. "I'll do what I can to help make him pay for leaving you there, but I need his name."

And just as quickly as the words leave her mouth, Fallon completely shuts down, occasionally nervous glances at the phone on the table next to him. It's a startling change. Joan has no idea what to make of it at all.

"Are you alright?" she finds herself asking.

Fallon can't bring himself to look at her, but nevertheless mutters, "Yeah, yeah, or as alright as I can be, anyway."

"I need his name," Joan tries again after a moment.

"I don't know his real name," Fallon manages after a moment. But Joan can sense it's all wrong, forced somehow.

"He used an alias?" Joan prompts, and Fallon makes a face. He's obviously reluctant to give the name up, but after the huge deluge of anger she just witnessed, Joan can't make sense of why he wouldn't want to give his partner over to the police. The whole things just feels really wrong.

Alarm bells go off and stay going strong as Fallon finally says, "Tobias. He called himself Tobias. He. He was an occasional play partner of mine. He'd been listening to me complaining about Siobhan for months. He was a good listener, he finally offered to help me do something about her, about how she was treating me." Fallon shrugs, like he can't bring himself to say any more.

A cold feeling settling into her gut, Joan pulls out her phone and brings up the picture of Gregson once more. Turns it around and shows it to Fallon. "Is this Tobias?"

Fallon refuses to look at first, but finally darts a quick glance, and Joan watches his face just crumble. "The man on my screen is Thomas Gregson, Andrew. Did he call himself Tobias when he met with you?"

All Fallon can manage is a short burst of nodding.

Joan thanks him for his time, tells him not to move his rehab out of state, and informs him the NYPD will be paying him a more official visit shortly. She gets up slowly, and makes her way over to where Marcus is standing. He catches her eye and leaves the room before she makes it across to him. He's waiting just out of sight for her around the corner from the entrance to rehab.

Joan has a moment before she can speak where she wrestles with doubt rearing its familiar head. Sherlock said Fallon might ID Gregson as his partner, but hearing Fallon's anger, she really believed for a moment that he'd actually give up his true accomplice. She wonders what his partner could possibly holding over him at this point, what could still be motivating the two of them to collaborate to set-up Gregson. For one ugly moment, she wonders if Gregson is even being set up. Maybe it was too much time in that interrogation room with Boyd, but who would she be if she couldn't force herself to examine all the possibilities?

"You OK?" Marcus asks.

Joan nods. Smiles a tight, necessary but insincere, smile. "Did you do what I asked you to?"

"Yep. The nurse should be meeting us out here as soon as it's done."

"Right," Joan sighs. Eyes a bench, and sits down on it. She's suddenly bowled over by how tired she is. "I'm exhausted."

"Me too," Marcus laughs. "Interrogations are draining enough when you're on the interrogative side of things, I've never been the victim of one quite so thorough."

"Mmm," Joan agrees. She thinks about maybe going to go get coffee. She closes her eyes.

The next thing she knows, Marcus is poking her awake. There's a short, Hispanic-looking nurse in the periwinkle scrubs everyone on staff in the rehab suite had on standing next to him. It takes Joan a minute to blink awake.

"He made the call?" she manages to get out around a yawn.

"Yes, Mr. Fallon asked me to call this number maybe... 10 minutes ago?" the nurse offers Joan a piece of paper. Joan doesn't recognize it, and hands it to Marcus.

"I don't suppose you happened to overhear what Mr. Fallon said?" Marcus asks her.

"Of course I overheard it, I have to hold the phone to his ear. It wasn't a long conversation. He said "Yes," and then paused, and then "Thomas Gregson." Then he waited a minute maybe and asked me to hang up the phone. Does that help you?" she asks.

Joan and Marcus share a look, before Marcus turns around and shakes the nurse's hand. "Thanks Yolanda, it helped a lot."

She disappears back into the woodwork before can spare her another thought. Joan looks at Marcus, who's studying the number on the paper intently. "I don't recognize the number, do you Marcus?"

"Actually, I do. It's the same one that Andrew Fallon called at the time of the crime, when we checked his phone dump. It's the main number for the club Canes."

Joan actually starts to feel a little excited that the pieces are coming together as well as Sherlock predicted. "I guess we know where we're headed next."

"I'm not exactly dressed appropriately to go clubbing," Marcus mock-complains.

"Don't worry, most of the people there will be too distracted to mind much," Joan comments, reaching for the elevator button. "And besides, I think you can never be too under-dressed in Canes, if you catch my drift."

"I am so not stripping down for an investigation."

 

*

 

When Joan and Marcus arrive at Canes, it's just after 10 pm and things are in full swing. Music is blasting, people undulating on the dance floor, and others in more secluded corners doing what they could only do at venues such as this one. They pay the atrocious $40 cover, hands get stamped, doors are buzzed open, and there are a surprising number of after-work white color workers just lounging at the bar that the two of them don't look all that out of place. Marcus hadn't understood why they couldn't just flash badge and walk in there like the cavalry coming down the mountain, but as Joan had patiently pointed out, they refused to keep a crime scene secure; Canes had little love for the police. And if Bo Newman really was Andrew Fallon's actual partner, it was better to let Bo think that he had one up on them.

Bo was exactly where he'd been the last time Joan had been here with Sherlock, lounging comfortably behind the bar, chatting with patrons and serving up soft drinks. He was wearing the same ludicrous leather get-up as last time. Joan slides in to an empty barstool, and Bo catches her eye almost immediately, acknowledging her presence. He almost immediately drops eye contact and continues his conversation with larger black man in a Punisher t-shirt sitting further down the bar, who Joan belatedly notices is holding a leash connected to a collared young, pale, freckled red head who seems content to lounge curled naked around his feet.

Joan wonders for all the parallels mediation might have to what the girl is feeling on the floor. She seems to be in a twilight state very similar to what is necessary in order to successfully meditate. She watches the girl's breathing rate and pattern, the utter relaxed state of her facial muscles. She wouldn't even be all that surprised if the girl were actually, somehow, asleep. Marcus jolts her away from that line of thought with a short squeeze on her arm -- Bo is approaching the two of them in a corner now, goodbyes to the man in the Punisher t-shirt apparently made.

"Hello again, pretty lady," Bo starts. "Brought someone else with you this time, I see. Sherlock's not most people's type, so I can't say I really blame you."

Joan raises her eyebrows, and Bo laughs. "Besides, this one's much younger. Less cranky, too, I imagine."

"You have no idea," Marcus chimes in. "Sherlock can certainly be a handful."

"I have more of an idea than you likely imagine, kid," Bo sighs. He looks at Joan now, the full weight of his attention on her. "Since you brought yet another detective into my club, pretty lady, I can only assume that you're once again here on official business. You seemed like you had better manners than to do that while I was working."

Joan raises her hands in a show of guilt. "You caught me."

"Are we still pretending this is simply an investigation into an unfortunate accident? Because you know, I'm beginning to think that if this is really anything else, I'll need to have my lawyers here and you'll need to bring your butts back only once you've gotten yourselves a warrant." The look on Bo's face is still friendly, but there's a certain amount of steel running behind it that Joan didn't see the last time she was here.

Joan looks at Marcus, and Marcus shrugs. "That's fine, but if we're coming back without speaking to you, I need to inform the supervising detective that you rebuffed us before we get back or we'll get our head chewed off. I'd call him from one of our cellphones, except they both died on the way here." Joan makes a show of trying to turn on her phone and Marcus's. If Marcus is surprised that his phone is dead, he does an excellent job of not showing it.

Joan makes her best helpless face and asks, "Could I use your house phone to make the call?"

Bo stays suspicious for all of a few seconds before Joan can see capitulation writing itself across his face. "Fine, it's behind the bar just before the cubby where Princess was sitting behind the glass taking your money. She's on break."

Joan winces and asks, "Is there another line in another part of the bar? I was hoping to call him somewhere quieter, he's kind of hard of hearing."

"Nope, darlin'. That there phone is the one and only in the club," Bo flaps a hand in the direction of the phone. "I need to make the rounds to make sure everyone is playing safe. Now, by the time I get back to the bar, I would greatly appreciate it if the two of you were gone." And with a tip of his hat, Bo melts into the crowd. Joan slips around to where Bo indicated the phone was, Marcus on her heels. As she begins to fish Boyd's number out from her purse, she notices Bo's utility belt lying in a coat-check cubby. Getting a closer look at at the rope coiled on it, she sees it's the same striking jewel red tone as the rope they found at the scene.

Leaning into Marcus to keep her voice low, she asks on an impulse: "Hey, you see that rope on the belt in there?" Marcus nodds. "While I'm on the phone with Boyd, could you use your pocket knife and cut a small piece off of it?"

Marcus looks at her affronted. "How do you even know I have a knife on me?"

"You carry it in your left back pocket. Please don't argue with me right now," Joan gives him a pleading look. "I realize this is a bit unorthodox, but please just do it."

Joan dials the number they have for Boyd and checks in as requested, all the while doing her best to shield Marcus's activity with her body. He pockets a one-inch piece of rope and she finishes her call, both of them done well before Bo begins to circle back towards the bar.

Once top-side, Marcus gives Joan a side-long glance. "Do I get to know what the hell that was about?"

"Oh," Joan starts. She fishes Marcus's phone battery out of her pocket. "Here you go. I wanted to know how many lines went in and out of the club. I'm going to ask Boyd to text me the number I just called him from. If it matches the phone number Fallon called, we might be able to grab some solid evidence against Bo."

"You're going to look for security camera footage of the cash register by the window where the phone is, aren't you?" Marcus guesses.

"Yep, and if we're lucky, we'll have Bo on that phone when Fallon was making the call from inside the Red Room," and then Joan adds, almost as an afterthought. "I'm also hoping that'll get us a warrant for Bo's books. If he doctored the log after Sherlock and I saw it the first time to add Gregson's name in, it'll make him look awfully suspicious."

"OK, so why the rope?" Marcus asks.

"I have a hunch it's identical to the rope used in murder scene. I can look to make sure the fiber is identical to the fiber of the rope in evidence, but I'm hoping Boyd will let me get that piece to Sherlock. He may pick up on something I can't."

"So," Marcus stops walking for a minute. "Back to HQ?"

"Coffee first, HQ second," Joan says, hoping she doesn't sound as caffeine deprived as she feels.

 

*

 

Joan is in the middle of analyzing the fibers of the rope under the microscope in one of the CSIs' evidence study labs in the basement, when she hears the door open and shut. She looks up, and sees Boyd walking towards her, nodding in acknowledgement.

"I must admit, a part of me had hoped you'd gone home already, Dr. Watson," Boyd starts, sounding almost as tired as Joan feels. Then again, he'd had the distinct displeasure of attempting to interrogate Sherlock Holmes.

"Why do you say that, detective?" Joan asks, rubbing her eyes.

"Because I doubt you'll get much sleep now," Boyd sighs, and hands her a plastic, lidless bin. "Put everything you want to give to Mr. Holmes in this bin. I'll escort you upstairs when you're done."

Joan blinks for a minute, then springs to action. She puts the inch of rope Marcus cut in the bin along with the evidence bag of rope. She puts the piece of paper with the number to Canes that Yolanda gave them in there. She fishes in her pocket and tosses the lipstick from their brownstone in there. Joan suddenly remembers to ask, "By the way, Detective Boyd, what was the number I called you from in Canes?"

Boyd checks his phone, and Joan is pleased to note it's identical to the number of the piece of paper in the bin.

"The last thing is that Detective Bell is fishing through the footage tapes from Canes the night of the murder. When he finds what I asked him to look for, can he bring it to Sherlock please?" Joan is hoping that Boyd is feeling generous.

"I don't see why not. If you're ready, come along." Boyd leads a marching pace out the door of the basement to the elevator bank.

They arrive on the Major Crimes floor quickly enough. Boyd leads Joan over to Interrogation Room B, and opens the door. Joan is thankful to note that apart from apparent exhaustion, Sherlock appears no worse for wear, and is -- thankfully -- not handcuffed to anything. Sherlock looks up at the sound of the door opening, and upon seeing Joan, blinks a few times in rapid succession.

"Hello, Watson. You're quite the sight for sore eyes," Sherlock exclaims, rather halfheartedly. When he spots Boyd behind her, his visage sours quite visibly. "You, however, I fear may plague me the rest of my natural life."

Joan almost snickers at the palpable animosity between the two men. She sits across from Sherlock, while Boyd stands at the edge of the table. Sherlock waits a minute staring the other man down, and then continues, "I thought we were done with each other."

"Oh, hardly," Boyd shakes his head. "Though I did say I was done with you for the evening. Dr. Watson, I'll be behind the omnipresent glass. I'll knock on it when your time together is up, and should Detective Bell come up before then, I will send him in as you asked."

"Thank you, detective."

Joan and Sherlock both watch the other man exit the room, before turning their attention on each other. "Do you have something for me, Watson?"

Joan pushes the box across to Sherlock, who picks through its contents delicately, pulling first the rope pieces out. She watches him go through the same ritual he'd performed on the crime scene -- rolling them between his fingers, smelling the rope, wetting his fingers and rubbing segments of it. He finally puts them aside, and looks up.

"Very good Watson, they're perfectly identical."

"The fibers are a perfect match, if that's what you mean --"

"No, no, no," Sherlock waves her off. "I meant they're perfectly identical. They're both made of jute, they're both processed and dyed in the same way -- before they're made into 4mm rope, strand by strand -- not to mention the dye is a rare dye, St. John's Blood. They've both been treated with beeswax, prior to being baked. And based on the smell, they've been oiled with monoi oil, which is particularly personal touch."

Sherlock gestures with a slightly dramatic flair at the two piles, stating with authority that, "These two rope segments are as conjoined as a bullet and the gun it was fired from."

"How likely is it that two different people would finish their rope this same way?" Joan asks.

"Nigh impossible. Monoi oil is a bizarre choice to treat rope, due to it's allergy potential -- it's made from coconuts. Most use jojoba. Combine that with maybe one or two people who process their rope with an animal-based red dye, you're looking at really singular rope."

"So the person that the one inch segment belongs to is likely the owner of the rope we found at the scene?"

"Well, provided, of course, they didn't give some of their rope away as a gift -- yes."

"Mr. Fallon admitted the rope wasn't his and implied it was his accomplices when I spoke to him this afternoon," Joan says.

Sherlock hummed in approval, rocking in his chair slightly. "I don't suppose this bit of rope happened to come from Bo Newman's person?"

"How'd you guess? He carries a hank of it around on his belt at all times." Joan is happy to see life returning to her friend. Sherlock looks as if he's bitten into something foul.

"The fat old bastard was always a bit of a show-off."

Sherlock peeks in the box with significantly more enthusiasm this time, and she can see the moment he recognizes the lipstick because he freezes. Sherlock doesn't even breathe. And then, so softly Joan almost misses it, Sherlock says, "It's that time of the month for you, is it?"

Joan puts her bitchiest smile on her face. "You really should've just let me use the upstairs bathroom."

"Indeed."

"I also figured you more for a classic red than a fuchsia, to be honest."

"Well, I'm glad to know you've given it some thought, Watson." Sherlock nods once, locking eyes with her and clearly telegraphing -- please not _now_ \-- before ripping the small piece of paper from the bin and holding it up to the light as if to suss out some secret code. "What's this, then?"

"That's the phone number Fallon called after I did what you suggested I do when we visited him."

"Oh, he fingered Gregson did he? What a coward."

"And then immediately called to tell someone at the end of that phone number Gregson's name. It's also the last number dialed by Fallon before entering the Red Room, and the duration of that call lasted the entire incident," Joan explains. "And it's also the phone from which I called Detective Boyd to check in while at Canes before returning to 1PP."

"It's a land line?" Sherlock looks mildly surprised, putting the piece of paper down on the table between them.

"It's the only land line in Canes."

"Is there surveillance footage of it during the murder?" Sherlock looks excited now, barely able to stay seated.

"I have Detective Bell looking for it."

"Excellent, Watson. You've done very good work, I must say," Sherlock beams at Joan.

"The only thing that escapes me is why Bo wanted Siobhan Fallon dead," Joan admits. She'd been thinking about it since their first trip to visit Bo and hadn't been able to gain much ground on the thought.

"Gregson told me that about ten years ago, just before Siobhan married Andrew Fallon, she and Bo had been an item of sorts. He also pointed me in the direction of her, ah, FetLife profile -- which is a bit like Facebook for those in the Lifestyle. I spoke to some of her Fet friends, who informed me that the break-up between Bo and Siobhan had been incredibly messy. She made him look like a fool, and he'd previously been her Dom from what I understand. To then turn around a marry a timid little creature like Andrew was disgusting to him. Both he and Siobhan are -- well, were -- big personalities in the public scene. She made a point of almost exclusively bringing Andrew to Canes to play, rubbing it in every time she patronized the club," Sherlock explained.

"When did you figure this out?" Joan asks, a bit taken-aback.

"Oh, well. Shortly before we went to visit Bo," Sherlock admitted, a little subdued. "I did mean to tell you, Watson, I was just in such a hurry to do everything, and then they dragged us both off pointlessly into interrogation here instead of letting us finish our work."

Sherlock shoots a little glare at the mirror glass as if to punctuate his irritation.

A knock at the door to the room came almost uncannily as a response to Sherlock's puerile face-making. In comes Marcus with tapes, looking annoyed, but not depressed.

"Did you get anything off the surveillance?" she asks the detective.

He pauses in front of the TV, addressing them both. "Yes and no. There's clearly someone on the phone, but -- look, just watch. You'll see what the problem is."

The problem, as it turns out, is Bo Newman's giant leather hat. It's all you see of him on the tapes, other than a disembodied hand that picks up the phone.

"You never see his face, do you?" Joan sighs.

"Nope."

"Damn," Sherlock hisses and slaps the metal table. The noise echos loudly in the small room.

"It's not enough for court, but is it enough to get a search warrant?" Joan asks.

"Definitely," Marcus replies. "In fact, I've already started the paperwork. With any luck, we should have it by noon tomorrow."

"As fascinating an evening of show-and-tell this has been, everyone, I think it's time to call it a night," comes the disembodied voice of Boyd over the PA. "Sherlock, take Dr. Watson home. Detective Marcus, let them know when the warrant has arrived."

"I thought you said you'd knock on the glass when our time was up," Sherlock snarks back. Two short bangs on the glass follow in short order. Sherlock mutters under his breath, "insufferable son of a swine herder, I swear."

Joan is a little shocked that they're all walking out of here together, but wisely decides not to comment on it for the time being. They're halfway down the hallway when Joan suddenly remembers the lipstick, and excuses herself to run back and collect it. But when she looks in the bin on the table, she finds the make-up missing. Sherlock hasn't heard the last of that line of questioning, no matter how deft his fingers. Joan heaves a massive sigh, and trots out the door to try a rejoin the others as quickly as possible.

 

*

 

"What's bothering you, Watson?" Sherlock asks, eyeballing Joan as she takes off her coat.

She thinks about dodging the question, but she wants to know how far everyone's personal lives really are going to be dragged through the mud in order for this case to be solved to the satisfaction of the IAB, so Joan steels herself, and then turns to face Sherlock.

"Why were you allowed out of police custody tonight?" Joan searches Sherlock's face. "Boyd seems like a particularly thorough investigator, and he knew you were hiding something with regards to how you and Gregson came by this case."

Sherlock smiles, and shakes his coat to free some of the rain from the wool. The whole front of their apartment fills with the smell of wet dog. It's an oddly comforting scent, Joan finds. Incredibly domestic.

"I gave Gregson an alibi," Sherlock admits with a small shrug of his shoulders. "I'm going to put the kettle on," is what he follows that statement with, as if he hadn't just admitted to Joan that he told the police he and Gregson were -- well, maybe not having sex, but the equivalent thereof in most people's eyes.

She follows Sherlock blindly into the kitchen, like a duckling following it's mama, all blind autopilot. Joan doesn't know where to start. She's sure there needs to be a discussion of some kind happening right now. And instead she's watching Sherlock evenly metering out Lapsang Souchong into the teapot. It's not even Sherlock's favorite. Joan prefers it, which is why it's even in the house. Yet that's simply another thing that's odd -- Sherlock attempting to make _Joan_ as comfortable as possible while they have this conversation. She feels vaguely insulted. And then decides that she shouldn't be, it's probably just Sherlock's way of admitting he wants Joan to be as OK with this development as possible.

Joan seats her self at the table in the kitchen and folds her hands in front of her. She starts to speak, and stops. Decides to think some more. Then says, "Exactly how thorough of an alibi did you give Gregson?"

Sherlock turns to her and blinks, then grabs the hem of his sweater. "I can show you the marks on my back, if you'd like. He's hell with a whip, and I think Cheryl had been giving him a particularly hard time --"

"No, that's not what I was asking for," Joan manages to squeak out, but not before she sees a few viciously red welts, and hasn't got the faintest clue of how Sherlock manages to walk around with them with a coarse wool pull-over rubbing against them every step. Except -- duh! he's a masochist. And Joan tries to deal with how much of a shock that isn't.

"Oh. My apologies, Watson," Sherlock says rather stiffly. "Though I don't have any problem discussing the details with you, to a technical degree, if you ever find yourself curious."

"I'll keep that in mind," and much to her eternal embarrassment, Joan can feel herself blushing. "I was asking how thorough you were in relinquishing detail to Boyd."

"Well, I left the fuchsia lipstick and women's undies bit out," and much to her horror, she can't tell if Sherlock is serious or kidding about the cross-dressing. Sherlock puts the whistling kettle out of it's misery, and pours the water over the tea. "But I mentioned we'd both been there that night, and he was getting in the swing of things at the time of the murder, which is. Well. Certainly a version of the truth."

He walks over a pours himself a cup, and then pours Joan a cup. He sits down, and looks at his tea, stirring a spoon in the hot liquid idly. "To his credit, Boyd didn't ask me any probing questions, nor did he feel the need to question my veracity."

"And luckily for him, he didn't bother to check into the identity of the male the police report stated reported the cries for help behind the wall."

"Oh that," Sherlock chuffed. "As it turns out, the police never interviewed the male mentioned. They got the information about him secondhand from one of the remaining bar patrons when they finally showed-up."

Joan can't help but smile. The two of them drink tea in silence for a little while.

"Is this all over, then?" Joan asks after a few minutes.

"The investigation? Practically. It's mostly follow-up. The important part is what you managed to do, which was convince the IAB of Gregson's, and subsequently my, innocence," and now Sherlock looks almost contrite. Which isn't a good look for him, Joan decides.

"Should I be expecting Gregson to come over for dinner on the weekends?" Joan jokes, gently. She knows the answer to that is no, even without asking. She hardly imagines this is a romance for Sherlock, certainly not anything with a domestic future. But she just wants to see him look anything other than guilty and useless, and the barb works.

Sherlock splutters his tea and all but squawks, "That's not quite what either of us had in mind, Joan."

Joan laughs. And then exhaustion hits her like a wall. It's been almost 72 of non-stop investigation work, and now that Sherlock has allowed her to feel victorious, she can barely keep her eyes open.

"I think I'm going to go to bed, Sherlock," she muffles around a yawn.

"You certainly deserve to, Watson. I'll come get you in the morning."

Joan nods, making her way to the stairs. The sound of Sherlock's words stop her ascent. "And thank you. For cleaning up my mess."

Joan's five year-old nice has a favorite saying -- shut your stupid face -- which Joan feels would work excellently here, but instead, she says, "Try to get some rest." And finishes the walk upstairs to get some herself.

 

 

Fin


End file.
